Fighting has erupted throughout the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, with observers claiming that the Islamic State group (ISIS) has entered the area, less than 25km from the Syrian capital’s most secure hub.
Yarmouk, the largest Palestinian camp in Syria, has been a frequent battle zone, pitting regime forces against Muslim rebels during more than three years of fighting, which along with a brutal siege has emptied it of all but about 15,000 of its pre-war population of close to 200,000 residents.
However, no organized Islamic State presence has previously been reported inside the camp. The group, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, has a hold over much of eastern Syria, part of the north and the Qalamoun mountains near neighboring Lebanon, but it is not known to have established a foothold in Damascus.
Photo: EPA
Officials from the Palestinian Liberation Organization said that Islamic State fighters entered the camp from the Hajjar al-Aswad area. Rebels who had remained in Yarmouk’s ruins are said to have attacked the new arrivals and clashes reportedly continued until the evening.
The area around Yarmouk, effectively a suburb of southwest Damascus, is controlled by Syrian forces, which for three years have enforced a siege that has led most residents to flee to other parts of the capital or to Lebanon.
The UN Relief and Works Agency has repeatedly implored Syrian officials to allow aid into the camp, which has been severely damaged by shelling and street fighting. The Aknaf Beit al-Maqdis group is reported to be shelling newly established Islamic State positions in the south of the area.
The Islamic State launched an offensive in western Syria last week, targeting the eastern countrysides of Homs and Hama, which are north of Damascus, but there were no indications that it would redirect its fighters toward the capital.
If the Islamic State is now confirmed to be inside Yarmouk, the group is likely to portray its arrival as a humanitarian liberation of besieged Muslims.
If the group has established a presence in the Damascus suburbs, it would be competing with rivals such as Jaysh al-Islam, which controls much of the Damascus countryside and periodically shells the city.
Hassan Hassan, a Syrian analyst and coauthor of ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, said that the incursion into Yarmouk, if it was made by the Islamic State group, was likely to have been carried out by sleeper cells in the Damascus countryside reinforced by small numbers of Islamic State troops, perhaps drawn from the Lebanese border region.
Hassan said the militants had been attempting for months to establish sleeper cells in the areas around Damascus, many of which had been dismantled by rival groups.
This month, a Jaysh al-Islam spokesman told al-Jazeera that the rebel group had killed and arrested members of an Islamic State sleeper cell in eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus.
Elsewhere, Jordan closed its only functioning border crossing with Syria following heavy clashes on the Syrian side between rebels and Jordanian government forces.
A Jordanian government spokesman told reporters that the Nasib crossing was temporarily closed late on Tuesday because of clashes nearby.
“It is important for us to keep the safety for the passengers and those who are trying to cross between the two countries,” the spokesman said. “So we decided to close the border temporarily until things calm down. Then we will open it again.”
A spokesman for rebels in southern Syria, Issam al-Rayess, confirmed that rebel fighters were trying to take control of the border crossing from Syrian authorities.
The Nasib crossing is the only functioning crossing between Jordan and Syria, and is considered a crucial gateway for Syria’s government and for Syrian, Lebanese and Jordanian traders and merchants.
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